Little Snitch 4

Find out who your Mac is talking to

License from $45 From Objective Development, obdev.at Needs OS X 10.11 or later

Little Snitch monitors your outgoing network connections and alerts you whenever an app attempts to “phone home.” That connection could be as innocent as Mail connecting to a mail server or as sinister as a piece of malware attempting to send your personal data to would-be hackers.

Whenever Little Snitch detects an outgoing network connection, it alerts you and asks whether you want to allow the connection or not — subject to a set of rules you enable or create. It’s a simple but effective idea and provides peace of mind if you worry about the privacy of your Mac’s data.

Improvements in v4 include the redesigned Silent Mode, which allows you to silence the app’s nagging and deal with alerts in bulk later. You’ll still get macOS notifications, but you can turn those off in System Preferences.

Also beefed up in version 4 is the Research Assistant that enables you to discover more about your alerts, subject to information provided by the app making the connection. We also like the map view in Network Monitor, which shows the location of the servers to which your Mac is connecting.

The bottom line. For those concerned about their Mac’s security, Little Snitch is an excellent tool.